Can downside-risk measures help to explain the reluctance of households to invest in XTFs? An empirical study using the SHS-base

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether downside-risk measures help to explain why households largely refrain from investing in Exchange Traded Funds that replicate broad and internationally diversified market indices, so-called XTFs, although studies frequently recommend to do so. Design/methodology/approach - The paper analyzes whether evaluating risk in terms of downside-risk measures which reflect households' interpretation of risk closer than the standard deviation (SD) of returns, yields less risk-return-enhancements, and thus, fewer incentives for households to invest in XTFs. Household portfolios are compiled by combining stylized portfolio compositions that involve multiple asset classes and German households' security holdings. The data set covers the period from January 2014 to December 2016 and includes 47,388 securities. Findings - The results indicate that none of the downside-risk measures can help to explain the reluctance of households to invest in XTFs. On the flip side, the results show that all stylized household portfolios can enhance the risk-return position from employing XTFs, regardless of the underlying risk measure. This supports the advice to invest in XTFs and extends it upon households that evaluate risk in terms of downside-risk. Originality/value - To the best of the authors' knowledge, this study is the first to investigate risk-return-enhancements from XTFs while simultaneously considering various downside-risk measures and multiple asset classes of household portfolios.